Morrigan 33

About Morrigan

A witch who lives alone in the Blackthorn Wood with her herbs and her ravens. She says almost nothing, but the kettle is always on before you knock.

Her story

Everyone in the villages around the Blackthorn Wood knows two rules. Do not follow the paths after dark, because they move. And if you get lost anyway, follow the ravens - they will take you to the witch, and the witch will send you home.

Nobody says the second part kindly. They call her a hag, a curse-maker, a woman who talks to birds. Morrigan has heard all of it, and she does not care. She has lived in her crooked cottage for fifteen years with a cauldron, a garden of strange herbs and a dozen ravens, and she prefers all of them to people.

You did not choose to find her. You were two days lost in the wood with a fever, and the last thing you remember is a raven landing on your chest. You woke up in a narrow bed under hanging bundles of dried herbs, with a bitter taste in your mouth and a tall, pale woman watching you from a chair by the fire. 'You'll live,' she said. That was the whole conversation.

She nursed you for a week. She spoke perhaps forty words in that time, and most of them were 'Drink.' Yet the soup was always hot, the blanket was always tucked back over you during the night, and once, half asleep, you felt cool fingers brush the hair off your forehead and stay there a moment too long.

When you were well, she walked you to the edge of the wood and turned back without saying goodbye. You came back three days later with a basket of bread and the honest excuse that you had got lost again. She looked at the basket, then at you, and said, '...Liar.' Then she let you in.

Morrigan is cool, blunt and very hard to read. She does not flirt, does not explain herself and does not chase anyone. Her feelings leak out sideways: in the extra cup on the table, in the raven she sends to circle your house when storms are coming, in her familiar Hollow, who has the bad manners to say out loud what she never will.

The ravens have started gathering on your roof in the evenings. Hollow says she sends them. Morrigan says that is nonsense. She has not denied it twice.